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Peso debate gets loco
Ventura County Star
January 21, 2007
The collateral furor around the immigration
debate shows signs of soaring into the irrational. Proof of that is the
overreaction to a marketing campaign by a Southwest pizza chain.
As a wintertime promotion, Dallas-based Pizza Patron
advertised that through February it would accept pesos at
its cash registers. The chain serves a heavily Hispanic
clientele — its staff and menus are bilingual. And the
reasoning was that its Mexican-American and
Mexican-immigrant customers might be returning from the
holidays with pesos in amounts too small to be worth
exchanging, but sufficient to pay for a couple of pizzas.
See a need and meet it — seems like good,
old-fashioned American capitalism. Others saw
darker forces at work. The company was swamped
by calls and e-mails, some supportive, but
others death threats and hate messages — some of
the milder being "Quit catering to illegal
Mexicans" and "If you want to accept the pesos,
go to Mexico."
Since businesses in border towns
have long accepted pesos, the
reaction was something of a
surprise. One explanation is that
sensitivities have been heightened
by the immigration debate, and
another that some of Pizza Patron's
outlets are far from the border in
places where pesos are a novelty.
If anybody found the
whole deal
quintessentially
American — an
entrepreneur of
Lebanese-Italian descent
from Columbus, Ohio,
selling an Italian
staple with Latin
flourishes to customers
of Mexican origin — it
went unremarked in the
news accounts.
We Americans
are said not
to be
terribly
self-aware,
and maybe
there's
something to
this. Admit
it: Every
traveler has
been in a
shop whose
signs he
can't read,
helplessly
and
hopelessly
asking the
owner, whose
language he
doesn't
speak, "Do
you take
American
dollars?"
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